


Advent Ground

by Rose Argent (roseargent)



Category: Vagrant Story
Genre: Blood Magic, Dreams and Nightmares, M/M, Post-Canon, Resurrection, Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-17 06:25:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16089911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseargent/pseuds/Rose%20Argent
Summary: A great wish comes at a great price.





	Advent Ground

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/gifts).



> I tried to keep in mind what you said about Sydney's limbs, and I hope the way I dealt with it works for you.
> 
> Your prompts were great, and I had a great time writing for you!

Ashley knew that he dreamed. The walls of Leá Monde rose around him and he could feel the power of the Gran Grimoire in them, power that lay now dead and cold in the waking world. In the dream he had never escaped; he wandered the city, travelled paths that, though they seemed familiar at first, never led where he remembered. He could not find the exit. 

His body grew sluggish--his limbs dragged, reluctant to obey him. They seemed heavier than before, heavier than fatigue alone could account for. He stumbled against a wall, put a hand out to brace himself, and metal claws scraped against the crumbling stone with a screech. 

Then, at last, he looked down at himself. The body was not his at all. So much thinner, so much more frail, and yet it had borne so much weight for so long. There was the gaping wound left by Guildenstern's rapier, no longer quite bleeding but rather oozing, viscous and black. Dead. Now that he knew to look for it, Ashley recognised the distant burning in his back, the tightness of half-formed scabs that pulled at him with every shift of his shoulders. 

There had been no body left, in reality, and Ashley remembered again that he only dreamed this. He was no wandering wraith, stumbling about Leá Monde in a stolen corpse. 

And yet the dream did not end. It had the taste of the Dark to it; he could choose to break the hold and force himself awake, but the dream would reappear every time he slept until he saw what the Dark wished him to see. He had once thought the Dark a bucking wild thing, like to tear the reins from his hands and trample him at the slightest slip of his attention. In truth it was a more subtle, clever thing, content to let the master lead only as long as it saw no shorter way home; once it had the bit between its teeth, stubbornly treading the path it believed would serve them best, there was little purpose in fighting it. 

Perhaps it had been different for Sydney. Had the Dark respected him as it did not Ashley? Or was he ever looking into the future and heading the blasted beast off at the pass, herding it along as he did everyone else?

So he continued to search this spectre of Leá Monde, all too aware now of the cold stiffness in his borrowed limbs, and wondered how long the Dark could preserve a body. Would it rot away while he watched from within, flesh falling away until its limbs rusted and its bones crumbled to dust?

Time passed, and slowly he became sure that he was not alone in Leá Monde. The monsters, the other wandering souls, all were gone, but something followed him in the dark corridors, watched him in the sun-dappled streets. He had thought it only the Dark, at first, his familiar companion, but it was not quite. Catching glimpses of it from time to time, he was sure that it was of the Dark, but had been human once.

The dead did not sleep, and if he remained still for too long the stiffness grew worse, but still Ashley needed to rest, now and then. He tried not to imagine what it would be like when his periods of rest meant a pile of disconnected bones and metal limbs lying on the floor of a catacomb, until something came along to disturb them. He made a fire and sat beside it, though it did not warm him, because the ritual of it was so simply human that he was unwilling to let it go.

"What a sorry state I find you in."

The voice and the words did not belong together. He knew them both--how could he not--and knew what he would see when he turned, but the wrongness of it made his cold flesh crawl. 

Ashley's body looked down at him, though the smile on its face was never one Ashley had worn. 

"Sydney."

"I think I've had the better part of this exchange." The man wearing Ashley's form stretched, moving easily and comfortably, and Ashley wondered if his body really had grown so hard and spare of late, or if it was only that even dreaming he could not imagine Sydney with so much bulk on his frame.

Sydney came closer, crouching down beside Ashley and cupping his face with one warm, flesh-and-blood hand. "Be wary of unwisely made wishes."

Waking with a start, Ashley wondered what wish he could have made to lead to such a result. 

***

Working as a Riskbreaker meant working alone. There was none of the camaraderie of other branches of service among the Riskbreakers, and certainly no friendships with outsiders--today's boon companion could be tomorrow's target, and secrets weighed heavily on any friendship. Ashley had believed himself well inured to solitude, had believed he preferred it, in fact. He was discovering now that solitude with purpose--with the weight of his nation behind him--was a very different thing than this aimless wandering. 

This solitude weighed on Ashley. As the months turned into a year, then two, he found himself wanting to talk to someone, anyone, and tell them everything, and have them understand. And perhaps he'd only ever lied to himself before, and he had always craved the comfortable companionship ordinary men knew, but he thought not. He had locked away that part of himself, once, and then Sydney had broken all his self-made cages, until he could not go back. 

And then Sydney had left him alone with the results. 

There had been no further dreams, or none sent by the Dark, in any case. Always there were the dreams of blood and pain, of a slender blond form dying in his arms. Sometimes it was Tia. More often, now, it was not. 

It was hard to pretend any longer that he did not know the foolish wish burning within him. 

***

Once again he dreamed. Around him was a town, one of so many he'd passed through in his travels. He didn't remember its name, or anyone he'd met here, though he thought perhaps this had been the town with that inn he'd so liked; he remembered the taste of their soup on a cold winter night, but not the face of the girl who'd served it to him.

Lights burned still in many of the windows, but the silence was heavy, and he knew there was no living soul left here. A door swung loose on a single hinge, the wood around the lock splintered and broken. Nothing came out from behind it save the stench of death, but still Ashley readied his crossbow. 

The closer he came to the centre of the town, the greater the signs of trouble. Claw marks scored stone walls, doors were ripped open so forcefully that the frames themselves were warped and broken. Everywhere was the smell of blood and waste, death not quite fresh but not long past. 

There was a town square here, Ashley remembered. A little old-fashioned, it was framed on three sides by the government building, the church, and the inn, open to the riverside on the fourth. It had hosted a market in the mornings and entertainments in the evening; there had been a troupe of acrobats here when he'd passed through, gamely putting on a show in the winter chill. 

When death had come there had been time for people to try to flee, but not time enough for many to succeed. The roads leading into the town square were all choked with bodies. The square itself was decorated with mounds of corpses, small ones where families had tried to protect their children, a large one where some had tried to make a stand. A stage was set up by the river, just as Ashley remembered it, though the ribbons decorating it drooped now, heavy with blood. 

For a moment Ashley thought the thing waiting for him on the stage was Guildenstern. It had that same blackened flesh, though it was human in shape but winged like the thing Guildenstern had become in the end. But the stage lights caught on metal claws, and Ashley knew who faced him. 

Sydney licked blood off his claws and smiled, stiffly, like he didn't remember how. "A great wish requires a great price. Who will pay it?"

Never taking his eyes off the thing that was Sydney, Ashley removed the quarrel from his crossbow and let it fall to the ground beside him. 

The creature was on him, then, bearing him to the ground. The eyes were still Sydney's, giving nothing away even as they stared into Ashley's heart. "Always so steadfast. You'd pay your own bill, but no one purse is full enough for such a wish." Claws touched his throat but did not rend his flesh. Sydney drew only long, shallow lines in Ashley's blood, leaning close to lick it away as it beaded on his skin. 

Ashley woke with the taste of blood in his mouth, and the phantom weight of metal limbs against his. 

***

The Gran Grimoire was gone, and Ashley had no teacher in magic--the Dark itself offered only hints and warnings. He would have none of the complex, arcane symbols Sydney had drawn so effortlessly, only brute force and blood. Well, and so it should be--he was not Sydney, to coax and manipulate men into shedding blood for his cause. If blood was required, Ashley would take it with the point of his sword. 

He had once shed blood enough to drown a man, in the name of his country, for the profit of those in power. That he now swung his blade only at his own discretion changed nothing--he would not hesitate to do what needed to be done. He would not allow innocents to be cut down for his own selfish desire, but the world had evil men and women enough for a thousand blood rituals. And he had only to hide a little less well and they would come to him, seeking the price on his head or the Blood-Sin on his back. 

Perhaps there was a little of Sydney in him, after all, to so callously lure men and women to their deaths, but he could not find it in him to regret it.

***

Though this dream, too, tasted of the Dark, there was a different feel to it from the start. It was more akin to those moments of connection in Leá Monde, when he saw through another's eyes. He was but a passenger in this dream, meant only to watch.

The Sydney he saw before him seemed younger than the Sydney he'd known. He was slender, yes, but not so much a creature of sharp angles and whipcord muscle. He stood naked before an altar, and his limbs were yet flesh and blood. There was a hint of softness to him, a subtle roundness to his arms; Ashley would wager that, were he to touch those hands, they would be smooth and fine. 

But when Sydney turned to look back, his eyes were already the eyes Ashley had known, deep with mysteries. 

"There must be another way, Sydney!" The voice was familiar, but it took Ashley a moment to place it--John Hardin, Sydney's second-in-command. 

Sydney turned away again, lifting his arms towards the sky. "There is always a price to pay for power."

"You have power enough, surely!" There was genuine anguish in Hardin's voice.

No answer came at first, save a tension in Sydney's back. Sydney had known, even now, Ashley realised--he had known that he would use this man cruelly, for the sake of his father's hopes. Sydney shook his head, in the end saying only, "Have them ready."

Ashley felt cool metal under his hands, then, looked down with Hardin at the clawed arms that would replace Sydney's soft, mortal flesh, at the legs Ashley had never truly seen, under the leathers Sydney wore. Laid out on the table they seemed so lifeless, and Hardin lifted one of the legs, feeling its heft. So much weight for a man to bear. 

The ritual was long, and Ashley struggled to catch the words of it. But though the rhythms were familiar, the old Kildean meant nothing to Ashley. He would have to make do with simple common speech. 

In the end the sacrifice was accepted, as Ashley had known it would be, and Hardin had hoped it would not. 

Hardin was gentle with Sydney, after, attaching the metal limbs with great care. Ashley couldn't tell if it pained Sydney, if he felt the weight of the metal as a burden--he never flinched, his expression never changed. The clicking of those claws as Sydney tested them out was so familiar to Ashley, but it made Hardin wince. 

When Hardin's voice spoke, the words were Ashley's. "Do you regret it?" 

Sydney looked at Hardin with a start, and Ashley could feel him looking through time and dreams and possibilities to see him. Clawed fingers, warmed now with Hardin's body heat, touched Ashley's cheek. "Not a moment of it. You will be everything I hoped for."

The connection snapped, and Ashley woke alone. 

***

Not all of the assassins that had come for him deserved to die, and there was just enough humanity left in him to see it. When he looked into the eyes of some of them he saw himself looking back--men and women loyal to their cause, all ignorance and patriotism. They knew nothing of the rot polluting their country's heart, they wanted to believe they served the greater good. And likely they did, more often than not, so Ashley let them wander a time in the Dark's illusions and was gone before their knives could find his back.

The Church sent no innocents for him, only mercenaries who cared for nothing but their purses. Perhaps the Cardinal thought him like Sydney, capable of casting doubt into the hearts of the formerly devout. Perhaps he simply trusted no one with any true knowledge of the Blood-Sin after Guildenstern's betrayal. Why mattered little--Ashley was content to have grist for the mill. 

Keeping them alive until he needed them was the most difficult part. His conscience bothered him not at all, though part of him knew that once it would have, before Leá Monde, before two years alone with the Dark.

Ashley wasn't sure how he knew when he had enough for the blood ritual, but he knew. He did everything by instinct, the Dark offering only a faint sense of what would work. A simple circle, the sacrifices evenly spaced around it. 

And then blood. Theirs, to build the power, his own to kindle it. He was not Sydney, to offer so much of himself to the gods, but give he must, if only what he had always given to his causes--blood, and more blood. He grew dizzy with the loss even as the power built until he felt he must ignite from the heat of it. It tore out of him in a rush, and he might have screamed but he could hear nothing save the Dark thrumming through his veins. 

Everything went still, power leashed and waiting for a command. 

"Sydney." 

The power coalesced, and twisted in Ashley's grip. It fought to go wrong, in ways he'd dreamed and ways he'd never imagined. But the memory of Sydney--Sydney as he had truly been--was sharp in Ashley's mind, and he held to it with a will.

The image of Sydney stood before him, then, not yet quite real. "Do you have the right to call me back from my rest, Riskbreaker?"

Ashley remembered Sydney's smile as he had gone into his father's manor, gone to his death with open arms. "Perhaps not." He held his hand out towards the spectre, and it shook only a little in his weakness. "But I have more than claimed the right to offer you the choice."

Sydney smiled, then, wicked and wise. "Rest grows tedious, after a time." A clawed hand took Ashley's, and Sydney stepped into the firelight, whole and alive. 

The Dark welled up around them, stronger than it had been since Leá Monde fell, at once joyful and strange. Ashley knew then they were not done paying the price for his wish, but he could not regret it. He pulled Sydney to him, kissing him hard, with all the urgency of two years of wanting. 

He was never sure, later, whether they would have gone further then and there, amongst the blood and the bodies, if Ashley's own blood loss hadn't caught up with him in that moment. The metal arms holding him were then holding him up instead, and Sydney laughed quietly. "Something of a reversal of fortunes." He shifted his weight until he could support Ashley, one of Ashley's arms over his shoulders. "Though I think with a different ending. Let's be away, then."

They left the bloody clearing behind, the rising sun at their back, the Dark nipping eagerly at their heels.


End file.
